Hey blog! It’s been a while since I posted, and since then, I have had two Humanities project. The one I will be talking about today is “The World Needs More Canada”.
So, what even was this project? Well, for this project I got to learn about Canadian identity, Canada itself, and why the world needs more of it. All this learning lead to one final product: an episode in a podcast. I got to create a real 5 minute podcast!
So, let’s jump right into it, and look at how I got to my final product!
A hugeeee chunk of this project was really just learning. As a class, we read over text, watched videos, and discussed about the subjects. These subjects included: The National, globalization, international conflicts, and more. During this learning, it was my job to retain the new information I had just learned, which I did by taking notes, and contributing in class discussions. It is a goal of mine to contribute in class, because I know that for me to contribute, I need to understand what I am saying/asking. For me, this is the perfect way to understand what I am learning. And I really got use this in one of my mini assignments, which was the “Thinking Thursday Discussions”!
Thinking Thursday discussions were an activity that let everyone practice listening, sharing, researching, and questioning. At some point over around 4 weeks everyone was tasked with researching a current Canadian event (sourced from “The National”), writing about it, creating opened questions from it, and the presenting it to small groups. For whatever anyone picked, they also had to answer one specific question: How does this story connect/reflect Canadian identity? I found this very fun and interesting! I learned a lot of things that I normally wouldn’t, considering I don’t normally listen to the news. For mine, I picked a topic I cared about, involving wildlife. I had lots of fun researching about it! I practiced my questioning ability by extra research and resources outside of the national, to make sure I fully understood the topic.
For the presentation part, I felt very confident in my questions, and lead a very interesting conversation. My group definitely helped, and embraced the thought-provoking questions.
After my presentation, I did get some feedback from my teacher, asking to elaborate more on the subject of Canadian Identity. From this, I used a discussion with my mom at dinner to help myself see what I thought about how the event, and the reaction to the event, reflects Canadian identity. The discussion let me go through my thoughts, hear other opinions, and come up with my final answer!
After this road mark, we continued our learning, and looked at how the diversity of Canada shapes the country! This learning was paired with quizzes on what we had learned, which was pretty cool, since PLP doesn’t normally do quizzes. I had a bit of a hard time with this part of the project. I definitely enjoyed learning about the topic, but I found myself getting distracted in class. Once I could finally recognize that I was at fault for getting distracted, I started to try and find a solution. I brought my headphones to class, tried to sit with people I knew would support my learning, and took notes (when I remembered to!). I feel like this part of the project set me up really well for the (basically) last part of it!
Our last piece of evidence was creating a multi-paragraph to reflect our learnings on Canadian Authors insight to Canadian identity, mixed with an area of interest. This sounds like a lot, and it was😭. We first learned how to analyze text, so we were prepared to do lots of reflections on short pieces of writing. We look at new Canada text, old text, and indigenous voices. During this, I really practiced my reflection work, while completing the evidence required on time. I felt pretty good during this, I read soooo much and I also did get a good insight into Canadian identity.
The images above show two of reflections I did for our literary analysis portion. I feel like these two were the hardest for me to assess, but were also my two best ones. I really used the skills I was learning to dive really deep into what the story symbolized, I feel like I ended up doing a really good job!
Now, we get to talk about the holy grail of this project, the multi-paragraph response! This essay is a reflection of my learning about Canadian identity and why the world needs more Canada. Now, the best part for me was picking my interest, which was the environment. Canadas protection for the environment is something I deeply care about, so I was very enthusiastic about researching on it. At first, I did have a hard time picking what “source” I should use, meaning the organization I felt best working with. I ended up picking the CEPA (Canadian Environmental Protection Act).
I thought it would get easiest from here, but no, I definitely faced some struggles. I had felt very confident in the information I was reading, I had a good understanding of CEPA (I credit my investigation skills). Actually writing was hard, but I ended up creating one of my most proud pieces of writing. My thesis statement was strong, I met all the requirements, and the information I had was good. I think the part I am most proud of was how once I started understanding my difficulties, I actually made a plan! I reminded myself of how when I normally end up in this situation, the best thing for me to do is just get my thoughts down. I also made sure to talk to my mom, because I know she helps me best. Doing these two things helped me push past my struggling point, and led me to the end!
This essay is something I am very proud of, aswell as what it led to! Though this part was not in humanities, I ended up talking this essay and turning into a podcast for my script.
But don’t you worry, I still have to answer the driving question. So, why does the world need more Canada? Well, I believe the world needs more Canada because of the impeccable drive for environmental protection. Having acts and laws in place to preserve the various ecosystems set Canada up for a livable future. These acts and laws do that, without compromising the present.
I believe the world needs more Canada, and so should you!
Thank you for reading my blog, I hope you had a great time!
“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”
This year has been one of my craziest. Through exploring Alberta, team-bonding at Loon Lake, creating so many videos, and much more, I have changed a lot. Looking back at who I was at the start of the year feels like seeing a different person. A lot of this year felt like learning experience, with many failures, setbacks, and frustrations. That mixed with the combination of being growing teenager left me struggling quite a bit. Though, a lucky skill I have gained from PLP is reflection and growth, so having such a hard year left me with so many opportunities to learn about myself a grow.
Now, let’s take a closer look, and jump right into the nitty-gritty of my grade 9 year!
Seeking help
I started this tPOL journey by looking back at my learning plan. Right away, I saw something I have been working on my whole life, and talk about quite a bit. Seeking Help. I wrote, “I want to get better at asking for help when I start to need it, rather then waiting until I am overwhelmed and start to negatively effect my work.”, which is still very true to me. Throughout this year I still struggled with this, but I am so proud to say that as I come to the end, I feel I have grown in this area! Though I still have projects where I struggled to ask for help, I think my last two were filled with a lot of good communication and help-seeking on my end! I would like to look at my most recent project, WWI con, as a strong reflection of this. Throughout this whole project I was very good at seeking help, largely through my peers! I was constantly asking for suggestions to make the process easier and opinions on my drawings. Having that support made the hard repetitive process so much easier, letting me create something I am really proud of in the proper time.
Resilience
The next success behaviour I want to talk about is resilience. A pattern that I have become very aware of is a struggle of resilience during projects at most inconveniences. I find that whenever I start to struggle, I have a really hard time continuing, trying again, or trying something new. Through my reflection skills, I think I have found a contributing factor to this, which is my ego. I think I have a really hard time admitting to myself that I am struggling, that I need to redo it, my method was not as good as another, etc. I do always end up continuing through the project, but sometimes that might take a very long time or from lots of encouragement from others.
A project I found this in was my Frankenstuffie video. This was a very very difficult project for me. It took my a very long time to create, through an honestly unenjoyable process. I became frustrated and overwhelmed quite quickly, but I didn’t want to admit it. This led to tons of procrastination, continuously making the whole project harder and harder. When I reflect on my process throughout this project (and many others that go along the same line) my biggest wish was that I didn’t let one small roadblock set me so far back.
I believe that improving my resilience will help me in so many ways. Being resilient can lead me to stay on track, which leads me to not stress about the timeline, which leads me to having an amazing project experience. My learning experience also goes a lot more smoothly when I can experience struggles without being fully set back.
Focus
The last success behaviour I want to talk about is focus. On first thought, I would say that I am a focussed person in class and at home, but on deeper reflection, I can see I do struggle in this area. I think a reason why I have not talked about it before is something I mentioned earlier, my ego. I know it seems like I’ve brought up my ego quite a bit now, but honest self reflection has been one of my biggest discoveries this year! I have been able to admit that when given class time to work on a project, I can lose lots of focus. This leads to me not properly use time that I have been given to work and complete projects.
I would still like to say, I believe I can be very focused, especially when learning. I tend to struggle more when creating my work.
A project I noticed I struggled focussing in was my “ In the name of nationalism” project. So much of this project was the actual creating, and because of the amount I had to create focussing and using class time properly was key. I would get distracted by my surroundings, which could be students, sounds, or even my own technology use. For that specific project, I found myself getting distracted very easily, which created so much extra out of school work. I can look back at projects now and see how when I was focussed during class, I completed my projects on time and to a standard I was happy with.
I am actually really happy to say that focus is something I have to work on. Obviously I am not happy that I struggle with focusing, but I am very happy that I am now aware this is something I can improve on because I think it will really help me.
I hope that as you have followed through my tPOL, you can see that I have become quite aware of success behaviours I can improve on and have improved on this year.I wanted to be really honest with myself in this reflection process, and set goals for myself after reflecting. As I did in my first TPOL, I have one major goal for next year. For PLP grade 10 I want to become more self accepting of what I struggle with. I have been aware of some specific struggles of mine for a long time, such as perfectionism and my issue with seeking help, but I tend to have a harder time accepting my struggles in areas I find more “ common”. I think this is partly due to my, as mentioned before, ego. I have such a hard time admitting to myself that I struggle with something I wasn’t aware I have struggled with before. After one specific conversation with a teacher I had this week, I feel like I have been able to fully look at myself in a new way. That conversation made me aware of so many things about myself, specifically how I have a hard time admitting to myself what I struggle with.
Knowing that I can be more comfortable with growth gives me hope and excitement for next year because I feel like I am giving myself more opportunities to grow and have a better learning experience.
I hope you enjoyed my tPOL and I hope you had an amazing year!
The title might be a little misleading, but this year for my PLP spring exhibition I got to present my hand-crafted comic on the battle of Passchendaele! Throughout this project I worked on my artistic ability, grew my knowledge on comics, practiced my historical fiction writing skills, and learned so much about WWI. During the actual exhibition, I got to practice my presentation skills by talking to many different parents, teachers, students, and members of the community.
I will definitely be talking about the exhibition more, but let’s jump right into the actual project!
WWI Con
Driving question: How can I create a graphic novel that accurately depicts an event from WWI?
For this project, we were tasked with the challenge of creating a comic book to tell the story of a battle/event from World War One. The first steps we had to take was a mix of understanding many aspects of comics as well as learning about battles/events that Canadian had been apart of in WWI. I felt like this part went by really fast, even though we spent over week getting the ground knowledge down. A lot of what we did involved taking notes, which I found I had a tricky time with. Normally I’m pretty good at notes, but for example, the video in class we watched was very hard for me to follow. For this project I don’t think it really affected me much, but it is something I want to make sure I improve. Overall the start of the project was pretty easy, but the deadline became very near and it felt like I hadn’t even started the actual project yet. We needed to decide what our comics would be about, and I chose the battle of Passchendaele. I picked this battle because it is one of the most brutal battles in history. Along with picking it, I had to fill in a pages document with a 5-W’s format for the history aspect of the comic, and then a story spine for the actual story itself. With a completed story spine, I needed to also create a story board, which was a full comic of rough sketches. This took me some time, but either way experience from my last crazy story board, I could make sure I wasn’t giving myslef too much worl. The story board helped me understand the work I was going to have ahead.
For the actual making of the comic I had a hard time. One of the hardest parts was just starting the good copy, and when I did, my first try was a big fail. I was also sick, missing two days of school, and starting all by myself. My first drawing was not detailed or accurate enough. I switched from free hand drawings to tracing, and found my art to be looking a lot better. My next problem was how long it was taking me. I had planned for 29 panels, and it had taken me a very long time at the start. With some self motivation and prioritizing work (two goals I have previously set for myself) I actually found my art to stay consistent and my speed to increase.
I finished my comic on time, with a level of detail I am proud of. This is a project I am very proud of. It is truly up to the standard I set for myself and is the ideal product of my work. I would have done my process a bit differently though. I wish I just started sooner, and actually tried to pick up the pace right away. I notice i procrastinate, and even though I produce work I am proud of, I normally have a terrible time creating it. This time was a bit different, since I did actually start to “lock in” sooner then I normally do, which felt really good and I know I want to feel like this for future projects.
Exhibition
Nowwwww let’s talk about the actual exhibition! Sadly, this has been my least favourite, for many reasons. For one, I felt very unprepared for it. Leading up to exhibitions we normally get lots of instruction from our teachers and guidance to organize an interesting area at our section of the exhibition, but this year we had none of that. We did not plan anything: decor, food, drinks, tables, etc. Due to this, on the day of exhibition, all of grade nine seemed to have a hard time setting up. I felt as if my group was quite lost, but lucky with team work and solving skills, my table created a small area that represented Passchendaele.
For the presenting aspect of exhibition, I thought I did a really good job of talking to the audience and explaining my comic, the project, and Passchendaele itself. I had a hard time at first, because I had not thought about what I wanted to say prior to presenting day, but I slowly became more comfortable. Once Exhibition started to get into its classic groove, ever become better.
This exhibition was a good way to end the year, even with its chaotic start. For the next spring exhibition, I want to make sure I am actually prepared. I think more communication will really help this.
“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”
My 9th grade so far has been filled with many new, fun, challenging, frustrating learning experiences.
There have been so many ups, but so many downs (so much growth 🙌). I can already say, this is the hardest school year I have had. I have seen new versions of myself through different situations, and how I handle them. At the start of the year, I wanted to have a very strong academic year (which I still do), but as projects passed, new priorities arose.
Everyday I learn, which I can wait to tell you more about.
Let’s get right into it and start strong with my “Thrill-Us” marker project! (Which was a ‘horror’ to make!)
Thrill Us!
Maker, unsurprisingly, was the title holder for “worst project”! This is a very negative way to start, but on a positive note, I feel reflects so much of my growth, learning, and areas for improvement. This project I am reflecting on is the Thrill Us film project, which my friends and I got to create. Immediately, I had to learn how to straight up create short film (which in itself is filled with so many aspects), but I also I had to this while working this many creative differences. I like to think of myself as a strong collaborator, which I still do see myself as, but I have never needed to work so closely which a group on such a creative project.
We ended up with a very unique concept that could have been such an amazing short film. The important detail we forgot as we created storyboards, characters, and plot summaries. Our plan involved unheated water…. In the winter. Sadly, we also were terrible at scheduling ourselves enough filming and editing time. So on the Tuesday night, we filmed our movie. On the Wednesday, we realized almost all of our footage was terribly shot, and unusable. This project was due the Thursday night.So that Wednesday, we realized we essentially failed. After creating such an intricate, unique, creative concept, our execution could not create a project anyone was proud of.
Now, after such a hard fail, we had to quickly bounce back. And we BOUNCED. We were given an extension to Saturday, and within that time we had to alter/revise our idea, film, and edit. Together, after learning how to work with eachother, we created a new story(which did not involve water!). Even in the few days we had, we made sure we started filming right away, giving us more time.
This project was an eye opening shockwave to the importance of time management, and balancing creativity with what’s realistic. I have now noticed myself reflecting to this project when I start new ones as a reminder of how much more challenging a project become when I don’t plan well enough. But, I do still create very challenging projects for myself, sometimes on a tight timeline. When looking at a recent humanities project “Rise of the Frankenstuffies”, I planned a very complicated and time consuming animation to make. I did end up completing it very close to the deadline, but still a little late because of the crazy-making-process.
Now that I can recognize this within my projects near the end, I need to become able to understand faster, and come up with solutions for when I do discover my project idea is too bold. I need to improve my learning plan, so I can meet the deadlines to my projects, while still having work that I am proud of.
I also would like to add how proud I am of the project, in the sense of how my team recovered, and created an insane short film (a piece of film media I will forever be proud of).
Louis Riel!
The next project I want to talk about was a RIEL hit! My Louis Riel project led me to creating a multi-paragraph response to the driving question: How has the portrayal of Louis Riel changed over time? When I first went into this project, I remembered thinking “this is going to be super easy!”. Turns outs, I struggled. Like, a lot.
We spent lots of time learning about Riel, which I felt did really well with. I became quite engaged in my work, and even enthusiastic. Then, when we actually had to start writing, I couldn’t do it. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but during that class on Monday I stared at my iPad as my peers around me seemed to know exactly what to do. Right after that class, I had a mini panic attack, which led me to finally asking for help. But within the time my humanities class started and when I was crying in the counsellors office, I could have asked for help. I also could have worked on not letting myself get to that point. Experiences like this have been happening my whole life, largely due to my perfectionism. I believe the reason I could not start writing my paragraph in class was because I wanted to get it right on the first try, but I knew I couldn’t, because I didn’t understand fully what to do. And because I wanted to be able to get it right my very first copy, a part of me believed I shouldn’t “need” to ask for help.
Before this project, I thought I had a very improved control over my reactions to situations likes this. In my learning plan, “improving coping strategies”, was a very big goal for me. It is something that effects me a lot. This project made me realize how much I still have to develop, while also leading me to very helpful strategies! Because I became hyper aware of my emotions in this time, I actually turned to social media looking for ways other people keep themselves calm. The two strategies I now use as much as I can are 1. Box breathing2. Asking myself “will this matter in 5 years?” . Now these strategies might seem strange, but have really helped me in following situations, such as moments in the “Rise of the Frankstuffie” project, and Di.
Even though I wish every project could go smoothly, I know most won’t. But, by the end of this year, I want to have done at least 1 project where I am not so strongly upset, panicked, and overwhelmed. I want to have a strong method for me to use during project so that I can let myself have help, and not be so freaked out that my learning experience is ruined. I have already come up with some strategies, but I now will also be asking for suggestions and HELP from my teachers and peers to be able to complete this goal.
Thank you for reading to my mPOL. This reflective experience has actually been very helpful, in reminding myself what is important, what my goals are, the crazy year I’ve had, and how much I have learned.
How do we as writers make our message clear and engaging to an audience?
Hey blog, I haven’t been here for a while, but I finally have a new project to post about: Rise of the Frankenstuffies!
This was a big project, which included me making my own stuffie, a written story about it, and then creating a movie about it. This may be one of the harder project I have done, because of all of the components.
Let’s start by going over what the actual project was. We started by understanding the driving question, How do we as writers make our message clear and engaging to an audience? We had to create a story that clearly articulates the message/theme, while still being engaging and entertaining. (Purposeful communication, engaging creativity and meaning making, and effective production skills)
The easiest part of this whole process was making the actual stuffie, and reading the book “Leviathan”. The stuffie I created was a teddy bear with some frog legs, and a platypus’s tail and nose. So while we were in the starting process for our stuffie, we read the book “Leviathan”, doing reflections on it every week. “Leviathan”, was the perfect story for us to read, because it has a lot to do about weird creature-mutants, while following the “Hero’s journey” premise. Our reflections of the book helped me understand why the book was successful. Brainstorming for our characters followed, which slowly transitioned into creating characters files and storyboards.
Then we started writing the actual story. I had a hard time with this because creative writing is really hard for me. It took me a long time to actually start writing, due to me not being able to come up with anything. I wish I would have just started writing, instead of trying to write perfectly the first try. I also wanted to be able to compunicate the idea of my story without writing too much. My first draft was very short, and basically just a chunk of writing describing what was going to happen. It wasn’t written like an engaging “hero’s journey”, but instead a brainstorm for what a hero’s journey would look like.
My second draft was a a lot stronger, a story I’m actually really proud of.I feel like this story is really entertaining, and something I would actually read in real life.
Now that my written form of this project was complete, I needed to make my digital media representation. Through this movie I needed to show my production skills, which I think I did very well. The platforms I used to create it were Keynote and iMovie. When looking at my storyboard, you can see there are many scenes(138 to be exact) and I animated around that many slides to complete my movie. Then I put it into iMovie to add sound. I think my movie is very detailed, and has strong animation. I feel like my movie doesn’t really tell the audience what I wanted it to. The message I wanted to convey was something along the lines of “Don’t let your fears/pains stop you from getting what you want”.
From a producing point-of-view, I really struggled with was finishing it by deadlines. The way I chose to make it took me a long time, and because it was a new way for me to create, I had to learn along the way.
Overall, this project taught me a lot of things. I got to work on my creative writing skills, communication skills through different media, media creating skills, and also a personal growth: time management. Because of how big but fast-moving this project was, when I noticed myself leaving things to the last minute, or handing things in late, it got harder every time to get back on track. I have a better understanding of the importance of meeting deadlines.
I hope you have liked my story, in both media forms! To give me direct feedback, click the link below! It will take you to a platform that you can give me direct feedback, make a comment, or ask a question!
Driving question: How has the portrayal of Louis Riel changed over time?
When I got back to school after winter break, I learned about my last project for Humanities in semester 1. For my three last weeks, I was going to learn about Louis Riel, and how his portrayal changed over time. I was ALSO going to be improving my writing abilities.
Now, to be able to answer the driving question I was given for this project, “How has the portrayal of Louis Riel changed over time?”, I need to learn the basics first. We spent lots of time learning about who Louis Riel was, where he was from, what he did, and who it effects. At the same time, we were also spending time learning about how we can use stronger words. These stronger words would help us improve writing pieces, and understand how to express a powerful message. We used frayar models, and other tools to help us with this.
Now that I had a good understanding of him generally, I started to her more about different portrayals of him. A really good example we looked at were two statues. One statue, made by Marcien Lemay and Étienne Gaboury, presents a very weak, powerless man. The figure has a distorted body, that is leaning over and has his hands behind his back. Then we looked at a different statue Miguel Joyal, that showed a very strong, powerful, heroic man. The figure is standing tall, is well dressed, and holding a scroll. The first statue was made in 1973, while the second one was made in 1996. From this comparison, you can see how negatively Louis Riel was viewed. Over time though, more positive portrayals of Riel came to life, as more people started to learn about him from more then just one perspective.
With all the information I had gathered, I could create my multi-paragraph response to the driving question! I had a very hard time with this. I found I had a really hard time starting my project, but with the help of an amazing teacher, I found myself creating something I am quite proud of. I got feedback from my peers, and from my teachers, leaving me with writing that I want to share. I feel I met the criteria, and showed my analyzing skills through my writing. I used two examples that we learned about as evidence, and explained how the portrayed Louis Riel, and how that contributes to the driving question.
Through this project I learned a lot. I learned about some words, and how I can use them to enhance my writing. I learned about Louis Riel, what he did for the Métis people, and how is portrayal changed over time. These aspects of what I learned are very easy to see, but when I reflect deeper, I can see a few more things. One thing I got to really understand through this project is when you look at history, you might not be getting an accurate explanation to what happened after you read on article, or look at one piece of evidence. Especially when the evidence you are looking at was from the time period. As these events are happening, everyone will have options, and biases, which can lead the to create information that doesn’t share the full story. Morals also tend to be differnt then morals that are more common now. I really understand how much a bias can effect the way a person is seen.
This project only took 3 weeks, but was still as big and important as a project I could spend 2 months on. I learned a lot, and got to practice skills in more focused, clear ways.
I hope you enjoyed my blog, and had a RIEL good time!
I am proud to say I survived my second winter exhibition!
If your new to my blog, I do exhibitions twice a year for school, to present a really big project I worked on. This year, the grade 9’s got to do a massive project about revolutions… and Rube Goldberg machines! I thought this was a pretty interesting combination, but it led to a very fun project!
The very beginning of the project started with understanding what a revolution is, and what it consists of. I got a really good understanding of this by learning about the 4 stages; incubation, moderate, crisis, and recovery. The stages showed me how a revolution starts, builds, changes, and ends(sometimes). It took me a little but to understand, but once I did I felt very confident.
The next step I had to take in this unit was creating an infographic about the revolution I would be studying for the rest of the unit. I got… the American Revolution!
I couldn’t just make the revolution straight out of thin air, first I needed to get a really confident understanding of the event. Lots of reading, lots of videos, and a very talented history major helped me get to that confident understanding. I had a very mixed time learning about it. At the start I was very comfused and found out my note taking skills were not as good as I thought they were. I had to practice taking notes a lot until I could easily collect the important, key information I need. Once I had a basic understanding the detail came a lot easier. I’m actually happy it took me a while to figure out, because it helped me see the value of useful notes, and about more successful learning methods for me. I am so extremely proud of my infographic, and I believe I show my skills through it.
Then we got to the really fun part, put final product! Now that we understand our revolution, we got to build a Rube Goldberg machine that was a metaphor for the revolution. Each component in the machine was a metaphor for an event, time, or change. This was probably one of the most challenging projects I have done. We had 3 weeks to build a massive machine, and because we were American, of course we needed the biggest machine.
I think my group had a hard time starting the actual build. It seemed like no one was super sure of our idea, so no one really wanted to make the first move. Once we got moving, some things came easier. We all had very complex but strong ideas for the “connections” in the machine, which lead to a hard time actually building the machine. I know for me personally, it was also hard to see other groups make significantly more progress. It took us so much time to build every little part, we started running into check up dates for parts of the machine we hadn’t built yet. We hadn’t tested many of the components.
When we did, they normally didn’t work, and we had to revise. While people were working on the machine, others had to create separate parts. We needed a video that showed the process of us building, aswell as a good design for the area of presentation. Everything that we needed to do seemed like a lot, and some days we seemed to be going backwards in progress.
I can’t say when, but at one point in the chaos, I feel my group started to work much better together. We started to make connections faster, and fix the old ones. We still were running out of time, as we came to exhibition day with a still incomplete machine. We did get to finish it, but because we finished it so late we didn’t have time to perfect it.
During the actual exhibition itself, our machine worked fully about 5 times! This was such a success, because right before the exhibition started, I wasn’t sure if it would work at all. So I can say I am happy with the outcome, but the progress and build up was not successful. If I were to do this project again, I would want to have better communication and teamwork with my group. This is something that I really try to work on, because I think it has a huge effect on the project. I am sure my group could have completed our machine much sooner, and been more prepared if our communication skills improved.
Overall, I really enjoyed this project. I feel like I demonstrated a strong learner throughout the unit, but still saw my weaknesses and areas for improvement.
I became an actor, a producer, and an editor, through one project!
Me and my three friends were assigned the very fun project of making a 2 minute thriller. It wasn’t just as simple as making a quick little vidoe, we had to come up with an original idea, then make a story board, full written plot, characters, costumes, locations, etc. This might sound easy to you, but for me it was quite a challenge. My group ran into many challenges along the way, but ended with an excellent product.
To start us of, we had to actually come up with an idea. For our vision, our story was: four girls go swimming one night in the ocean. They are all by themselves, but having a good time and nothing seems to be going wrong. Then, one girl swims a bit further away from the group, looks back, and someone is missing. She starts going towards the group, but another one goes missing. Then the third girl goes missing, and the last girl is all alone. The movie ends on a cliffhanger, with the last girl floating in the water, all by herself, as two hands reach over her shoulders. I think this is a pretty bomb idea.
We discovered the first problem really quick; filming in the ocean would be so bad and cold, at night, in November. It would be impossible, and honestly pretty unsafe. We quickly fixed this problem by changing locations, instead of the ocean we would film in a pool. So with this pivot we only had to change the location, all the characters and the main idea stayed the same.
Now that we had everything, we got to filming. Problem #2 came up, when we were 4 days away from the deadline and hadn’t started yet. We also only had one night that we were all available, so we had one chance to get this right. We should have made more time to film, or changed the idea right there and then because only having one night to film is very unrealistic. But sadly, we were to confident and went to the filming site. Then comes problem #3. The pool we wanted to use is outdoor, and unheated. We were so cold that it took us almost three painful hours of going from pool to hot tub before we got all the shots. Now, because of the coldness, lots of our shots were done poorly. No one wanted to be in the water, so filming became hard, and acting became even harder. We had shots that we wanted peopel to be in the background of, but because everyone was cold, we thought it would be fine to leave out those (important) details.
This is when problem #4 came. The next day at school we started editing, and realized very fast that more then half of our shots were not good enough. And remember how I said we only hand one day to film? That meant our one chance was lost and we had 2 or 3 days left before the deadline.
Our next action would be huge, and have lots of things attached to it. We wanted to get an extension to the project, and change our idea, so we could hand in an actual video that met requirements. Our new and improved idea was still in the same realm as our first ones, but instead of being in cold water, we would film in a forest! I think this pivot was actually so successful, because it lead to a product that I am so proud of. We didn’t have to change our plot to much, because we kept the idea of people going missing, but we just had to tweak our transitions from in-water moments, to ones that would work in a forest.
We also got help from our friend Zach, who filmed many scenes for us. We also learned from the “only one day to film” incident and made sure everyone was available at least three times before our new due date. Our filming went smoothly, especially since we weren’t in freezing cold water. I feel like everyone could also “act” better, just because of the more time we gave ourselves, and the more comfortable environment.
This project was pretty rocky, we faced a lot of challenges and for a bit I thought we wouldn’t have any final project, but with problem solving, teamwork, and help from others, I am proud to hand in my video.
How do the choices we make set our future path? -driving Q
In what felt like the middle of no where, my class grew from a bunch of kids in an iPad program, to a team.
For 1 week, my whole PLP grade went to loon lake for a Team-Building and Leadership retreat. During this retreat we learned a lot about ourselves, but also about eachother and community. I think that everyone that was on this trip took at least one thing away from it, but I know that I personally took away a lot.
Throughout the week we worked on a booklet, which was filled with activities that helped us understand many things, like what a successful leader, what type of leader I am, my strengths, etc. Before we went through this book, I thought I already had a really good understanding of this, but I actually learned so much more.
One of these things that I learned that really stuck with me was identifying my leadership style/styles. My leadership style is encourager. This style is pretty self explanatory; I am very encouraging, I celebrate achievements, I give lots of support, and lots of appreciation. I feel like this fits me perfectly. Now I know my leadership strengths, and where/how I can support my team the best.
Another thing that really stuck with me are my emotional intelligence traits. I am emotionally self aware, I have group awareness, and I am empathic. Knowing these continues to help me use my strengths when working in a group, but also helps me understand what I need to work on. I know I need to work on optimism, adaptability, and emotional self control (a trait I think might be the most important to have!).
The book wasn’t all we did while on our trip, we also got lots of hands-on actives. Some of these were like high-ropes courses, rock climbing, and archery. Through these activities I found the groups we were placed in started to grow, and created a sense of trust within everyone. More trust was built as we grew into more intense activities, like the trust fall. For this trust fall, one person stood on a chair which was on a table, and fell backwards into the arms of classmates. This activity was really big for me, because it was one of the first times I have trusted my peers so much. Falling from so high is really scary, but having a team there for you makes it so much easier.
This was such an amazing week, I learned so much but still had so much fun. I got to think about so many different things, and do so many things. But before I leave, I need to answer the driving question! “How do the choices we make set our future path?” Everything I ever do will effect me and my future, even if it’s in the smallest way. But these small effects can lead to much bigger ones. Going to a small retreat for one week in 9th grade might not seem very impactful, but that one week taught me skills in need for my future, and taught me how to get there successfully. Being a good leader is one thing, but understanding why you are a good leader and how you can be an even better one is so much more.
For one whole day, I got to follow my mom around to understand what she does for work!
She is an organizational psychologist, who does leadership development. She works with people help them become better leaders. She does this in lots of ways; through assessments, workshops, and coaching sessions.
When she does assessments for individuals, she is using tools to discover their greatest strengths and weaknesses relative to leadership skills. For workshops, she works with groups or teams, and teaches them new leadership skills. This could be about how to communicate effectively, or how to give feedback (kind of like PLP!). In her coaching sessions, she discuses what her client is struggling with by asking lots of questions, helping them understand their problem better, and helping them find a solution for that issue by themselves. This makes sure they know what their problem is, and they have a solution that works best for them.
Because I am a super cool PLP student, I got the opportunity to turn this day into a film! I had the task of creating a short video that showed what I did on take-your-kid-to-work-day, and what my mom does everyday! To create this video, I needed to have a rough idea of the shots I needed (lots of b-roll). Luckily, because my mom works from home, if I needed more videos of her office I just had to walk down stoke stairs. So the day before, I made sure I had an idea of the clips I needed, as well as my interview questions.
On the actual day, I filmed as much as I possibly could! I also took some notes on what she was talking about so I could have a really good understanding of what she does every day. She showed me her client work, and her “behind the scenes” work. That would be things like invoicing and scheduling.
Now that I had all the information I needed, the interview, and some b-roll, I started putting the clips together and creating a script. I editing my scenes lengths and removed the sound. I tried to get a variety of angles when filming, and pieced them together in ways I thought they would work well. I recorded my script and boom video was done!
This project helped me get more comfortable making short movies, enthuse on short! Normally I am not good at making short videos when I have to include narration, but I think I did much better on this video!
I had a really good time with this project, and had lots of fun learning about her work!
I don’t know if I could see myself being a leadership developer, but could you?
After this road mark, we continued our learning, and looked at how the diversity of Canada shapes the country! This learning was paired with quizzes on what we had learned, which was pretty cool, since PLP doesn’t normally do quizzes. I had a bit of a hard time with this part of the project. I definitely enjoyed learning about the topic, but I found myself getting distracted in class. Once I could finally recognize that I was at fault for getting distracted, I started to try and find a solution. I brought my headphones to class, tried to sit with people I knew would support my learning, and took notes (when I remembered to!). I feel like this part of the project set me up really well for the (basically) last part of it!
